


After The End

by minbins



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, DO NOT REPOST MY WORKS I DO NOT CONSENT TO REPOSTING, Falling In Love, Implied Sexual Content (none detailed), M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Zombies, character study of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:46:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22804300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minbins/pseuds/minbins
Summary: “It’s a depressing world, Seonghwa.”“It is what we make of it.”
Relationships: Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 30
Kudos: 126





	After The End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yuzuzuyu1](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=yuzuzuyu1).



> For reference, [1:2] would equal 1 year and 2 days since the apocalypse. It's pretty self explanatory, but I didn't want to risk confusion with this writing style. This is not told entirely chronologically, so check the dates.

_Hongjoong and Seonghwa are sitting on the roof of an abandoned supermarket, drinking idly as they face their own mortality. Below them, a slowly growing horde of the undead._

_————————_

**[8:17]**

There is Before and there is After. The bridging point between the two is known as The End. It is in the circles they have run, at least, and so Seonghwa and Hongjoong have picked it up as fact. History seems easier to quantify when events have names, and though they doubt they’ll be around for the future, they’re aware that they’re part of history. When humanity verges on extinction, after all, each surviving member of humankind is granted a certain level of significance. Before it happened, before The End, many people believed that they were special. They were not. Infinitesimally small fractions of a wider population have little chance of making a mark on history. Hongjoong knows that he is special, for he is one of few to survive even the beginning of The End, and one of fewer still to survive this long.

Today marks exactly eight years and seventeen days After. Hongjoong knows, for he tallied it in his journal as they woke with the sunrise. Time at its most calculated no longer exists for the two of them, as they see little point in seconds and hours these days. Instead, they measure life by dawn. Perhaps it’s fruitless, but if it serves no other purpose it at least reminds them of their age, and of how long it has been since The End. If there comes a point past After, perhaps Hongjoong’s diaries will serve invaluable for documenting this time. He likes to think so, at least, as he buries them in sealed boxes when they become all filled up. Carrying them around would probably be the death of him, the added weight of dozens of journals dragging his feet as he runs from the corpses. Perhaps he’d take Seonghwa with him, and that would never do.

Hongjoong shows emotion to few these days, and shows true emotion to only one. Seonghwa is much the same. It’s easier that way. Hongjoong really would hate himself, if there’s an afterlife in which to do so, if he was the beginning of Seonghwa’s end.

He thinks he soon might be.

———————— 

**[0:64]**

Hongjoong first met Seonghwa sixty-four days After. He’d met other people before then from the dwindling pool of humanity, and he’d meet more after Seonghwa. Seonghwa, however, has proved the only constant. At the time, Hongjoong had wondered how someone like Seonghwa had made it so long. He found him standing on the roof of a car, holding an empty gun and a pen-knife. As tempting an appeal as guns were to most immediately After The End, they were also an almost certain death sentence if you built up a reliance. Guns are loud, guns draw the undead like their corpses draw the flies. Seonghwa, on the run from one of the initial facilities after infighting had bled into something like war, had been spooked by a corpse and used his last two bullets to shoot it in the chest. 

In the _chest._ And his last two bullets, at that. Firstly, shooting a zombie in the chest does jackshit, and secondly, it’s common sense to keep one bullet for yourself if you need it. Seonghwa could have done with a bullet, if Hongjoong hadn’t come along. The zombies would have pulled him off that car roof had Hongjoong arrived there even minutes later to check out the source of the gunshot. He’d been crashing in the area, and the noise meant he’d have to leave before the swarm hit. Feeling charitable, Hongjoong had cut the small grouping of them down, saving Seonghwa from a guaranteed death and probable reanimation after the fact. 

Hongjoong had been smart from the start— as a fencing student who probably would have gone all the way to the Olympics back Before, Hongjoong had adapted to using a sword. Much less of a siren to attract the undead than Seonghwa’s stupid little gun.

———————— 

**[8:17]**

“What’re you thinking about?” Seonghwa asks. It’s the first time he’s spoken in the past twenty minutes or so— they’ve been watching the horde under their rooftop. To speak will likely lead to discussing the reality of their situation, and Hongjoong doesn’t really wish to do so. 

Still, Seonghwa asks, so Hongjoong replies. He can deny anyone else in this miserable world, but not him. “Your gun.”

“Are we talking innuendos or 0:64?”

Hongjoong crinkles his nose. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not go out with a bang, darling. Corpses make the most unwelcome form of voyeurs. I doubt I could keep it up.”

“You mean 0:64, then?”

“You were a fool back then.”

“I’m a fool now.”

“By large, that’s only when I’m concerned.”

“True.” Seonghwa throws back a mouthful of soju. They’d snagged a couple bottles on the way up here after barricading the doors. Drinking is foolish after The End, but it bears little consequence when their own end seems nigh. Hongjoong had been right, that talking would serve a reminder of reality, but he likes the sound of Seonghwa’s voice, so he doesn’t regret. “So, my gun?”

“I like your bat more.”

It lays on the ground next to where they sit, along with Hongjoong’s sword. A baseball bat, with nails sticking out of it for maximum efficiency. Seonghwa scoffs, and Hongjoong realises he’s thinking of another dick joke. He hadn’t made nearly so many Before, Seonghwa had confessed to Hongjoong once, but humour is how he deals with stress. Seonghwa is clearly stressed at present, and understandably so. Death is beating at the barricaded doors of their abandoned supermarket. They’ve survived worse against the odds, but something in Hongjoong registers this as final. He doesn’t know why this time, why now, but it feels different. The soju in Seonghwa’s hand shows that he feels it too. Hongjoong digs his latest notebook out of his backpack. Part of him sits dissatisfied with the fact he’s only halfway through it. It doesn’t feel like a proper ending.

Life is unreliable that way— you never know when it’ll be over.

———————— 

_[Kim Hongjoong, 8:17 After. Some point nearer to sunset than sunrise.]_

_Today, above all other days, feels like the end. Not The End, but_ _the_ _end. A markedly less significant end, but one of personal importance. My own. And, while I regret to notate this,_ _his._

_Sunrise was like any other, nondescript in its normalcy. Morning was fine, meeting only a few of the undead. It was unfortunate, what happened with that gunshot. More unfortunate still how I find myself (and my beloved) on a rooftop watching death trickle closer. I suppose I should explain._

———————— 

**[0:121]**

Outside, a bell rings, signifying that one of the traps has been triggered. As Hongjoong shakes Seonghwa awake, it rings again, and again. There’s multiple, and they need to _go._ Seonghwa stumbles into consciousness with Hongjoong pulling him to his feet. Used to the privileged camp life afforded by being the son of a diplomat, Seonghwa isn’t yet accustomed to the need for restlessness as Hongjoong is. “Dead outside,” he tells him, and that seems to wake Seonghwa up. “Trap triggered at least twice.”

They head out the back. Seonghwa doesn’t speak, because he gets louder when he’s nervous and that’ll only draw the corpses closer. He’ll get past that eventually, but he hasn’t yet had time to learn. Hongjoong glares at Seonghwa as he dares to draw his gun when a zombie surprises them on the back-route. All that would do is draw more their way, as Hongjoong _keeps_ telling him. They need to find him another weapon that’s less dangerously conspicuous. Hongjoong slices the body down with his sword, Seonghwa watching him in a fascinated state of awe, and they hurry away to the sound of the dead breaking down their crash house’s front door. 

“You look so cool like that,” Seonghwa admits, somewhat shyly. Hongjoong’s first instinct is to blush, because Seonghwa is pretty in a way Hongjoong hasn’t dealt with for a while.

He pushes it down. “It’s not cool, it’s necessary.”

“Can’t it be both?”

Hongjoong doesn’t really have an answer to that. “Shut up.”

“Yes, sir,” Seonghwa mocks. He’s getting comfortable around Hongjoong now, enough so to tease him, at least. That probably isn’t a good thing, given either or both of them may die any day now. He can’t make himself tell Seonghwa to _stop,_ though, for some reason.

———————— 

_As I say, today began like any other. It doesn’t surprise me, because in the After any day is a day well enough to kill you. We finished off the last of our tins this morning, meaning we knew we had to make a run for more, lest we end up hunting pigeons again. I wish we had now, of course, but hindsight is useless. We knew of a store we’d been to once before in the area, and figured hitting it was our best chance unless anyone had been there since our last visit, when there had been cans enough that we had to leave some behind._

_When we arrived, the store was not empty._

———————— 

**[0:123]**

There’s a sports store on this abandoned street, and it doesn’t look like it’s been looted too badly yet. Hongjoong goes inside first, and upon discovering no dead, he urges Seonghwa to follow. When they leave, it’s with Seonghwa holding a baseball bat.

“Hey, you know in the zombie films,” says Seonghwa, “where they have the, you know, spikes?” He swings the bat dramatically as he’s in one of those movies himself. In reality, it needs much more force, but Hongjoong doesn’t break his bubble.

“You want a spiky bat?”

“Yeah, nails and all that,” Seonghwa smiles like an excited child, and it’s cute in a way Hongjoong would normally be irritated by. An apocalypse can give anyone a short temper. With Seonghwa, though, Hongjoong is endeared. He doesn’t let himself think about what the repercussions of that may be. 

Hongjoong had been into design, arts and crafts and the like, Before The End. When he tells Seonghwa, the other man laughs. _“What?”_ Hongjoong retorts, hackles up and defensive. “Can’t a man have range.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Seonghwa placates, “It’s just, I bet you were so cute like that.”

Seonghwa really needs to stop calling Hongjoong cute, for the good of them both. _Distraction equals death in the After. Everyone knows that, or aren’t alive to be so informed._ “Stop that.”

“I’ll make you admit you’re cute someday,” Seonghwa sing-songs, and pinches Hongjoong’s cheek. Hongjoong points his sword at him in response. He reminds Hongjoong of how carefree he used to be too, Before. Seonghwa hasn’t been out of the gated facility for all that long, so Hongjoong supposes his light-heartedness will fade. It’ll be a shame, seeing the sparkle in his eyes dull, but it’ll be necessary just the same. 

“What?” Seonghwa jibes at him. “Gonna tilt my chin with that thing?”

“Do you _want_ me to?” Hongjoong replies, hoping it’ll make him stop.

“Hmm…” Seonghwa considers. “It’d be hot, if it were a little less bloody.”

Hongjoong realises, in that sharp moment of clarity borne of far too long in denial, that Seonghwa is flirting with him. That complicates things, rather. “Anyone would think you like to be intimidated,” he responds lightly, nonetheless. _Seonghwa is pretty, unfortunately so._

Seonghwa stares, looking a little shaken by Hongjoong actually reacting. He gulps, then hardens his expression in a way that fools neither of them. “Maybe I do— what about it?”

“Oh, nothing.” Hongjoong opts to let the subject go, as much as part of him wants to see how far Seonghwa can be pushed. 

_Distraction equals death._

Seonghwa looks disappointed. 

———————— 

**[0:210]**

“Are you straight?” Seonghwa asks out of nowhere. They’re fishing, having found a river with no corpses nearby. It’s a godsend, food that hasn’t come from a can. 

Hongjoong’s chest tightens up a little for reasons he doesn’t go into, even in his own mind. “No,” he says blithely, lifting a fish from the water with their makeshift fishing rods. Seonghwa’s rich-boy summer camp knowledge comes in handy, sometimes. “What gave you that idea?”

“Oh, I didn’t think you were,” Seonghwa replies, all too casual. Hongjoong wonders how it’s so easy for him to be this way. He wonders how he doesn’t spend every second overthinking every step he takes in the After, the way Hongjoong always does. They balance each other out, somewhat. “I just wanted to make sure.”

Seonghwa doesn’t say _why_ he wants to know. Hongjoong gulps, and swallows his pride. “Why?”

“You know why, Hongjoong.”

Hongjoong _doesn’t—_ that’s why he’d _asked._ Or perhaps he does, and just doesn’t want to admit it, because admitting leads to worse, and Hongjoong overthinks the implications. “I don’t,” Hongjoong says, but he doesn’t push it.

In turn, Seonghwa doesn’t elaborate. “I’m not straight either, you know. Just putting that out there.”

Hongjoong does know, but pretends it’s news. No straight man’s eyes linger the way Seonghwa’s do. “Oh, okay.” _Hongjoong is fooling no one._

“Aren’t you going to ask _why,_ Hongjoong?” Seonghwa’s bluntness shakes a little in his throat, reedy in insecurity.

Focusing intensely on the fish in his hands, Hongjoong shakes his head. “No, I’m not.”

———————— 

_There were only a few dead there, and we took them out quietly enough, heading to where we knew there were tins. There, we found disarray — either someone else had raided there, or a corpse had walked around knocking things over. The latter would have had less consequence, but unfortunately our question was soon answered by the sound of a car outside. There was some shuffling, and then a scream, and the car pulled away._

_In walked a woman, who was still a woman at the time. She had a chunk missing from her arm, and that’s around the time our day turned south. She didn’t seem to be armed, and like a fool I wanted to put her out of her misery. Nobody deserves to become one of them, but I selfishly wish I’d left her to such a fate._

———————— 

**[0:365]**

It’s one year After, and they treat it like New Year’s Eve. Time may have no meaning, but perhaps their sanity will cling on in this post-human world if they cling onto some things from Before. They don’t drink, because like many things that is a death sentence with the wrong set of circumstances, but Hongjoong and Seonghwa share a few cans of soda that they’ve saved in their current hideout for tonight. There aren’t many dead in the area, and they’ve killed the remnants of a family that still remained in this quiet suburban house. It has a balcony, and that’s why Hongjoong picked it.

For now, at night. To watch the stars in a clear sky. Pollution lingers on their planet, but they’re not in a city at the moment. It’s late, in some sense of the word, when Hongjoong pops the last of his cans open. Past midnight, for sure. “We’ve made it a whole year, huh?” he remarks. It feels morbid to say. “I wonder how long we’ll last.”

“Don’t be depressing, Joongie,” Seonghwa complains. He started calling Hongjoong that a while ago, and Hongjoong has given up on trying to make him stop. He’d even introduced Hongjoong as ‘Joongie’ to a group of travellers they’d run into a few weeks ago, and Hongjoong threatened to throttle him for it. The threat lost its edge somewhat when Seonghwa bared his neck and replied, _I dare you._

“It’s a depressing world, Seonghwa.”

“It is what we make of it.”

“Maybe to you.”

“I’d like to _actually_ live for however long I last.”

He sounds like he has something in mind. The edge to Seonghwa’s voice goosepimples Hongjoong’s skin. It isn’t cold— The End had happened in the summer. Seonghwa sees him shiver, and smiles as Hongjoong asks, “What do you mean?”

“You said we should keep some traditions alive, yeah?” Seonghwa remains annoyingly vague. Hongjoong nods. “Well,” Seonghwa continues, “We haven’t ticked off the most memorable one for New Year’s, have we?”

Hongjoong pretends not to understand. “Fireworks would kill us.”

“Not the kind I want, they wouldn’t.”

“Debatable,” Hongjoong retorts. Seonghwa seems closer than before. Hongjoong realises that he _is._ Seonghwa leans closer still. “Distraction equals-”

“Death,” Seonghwa parrots Hongjoong’s usual phrase with a roll of his eyes. His lips look pretty up close. Hongjoong isn’t quite sure what it is to breathe— perhaps he’s already dying. “But a _little death_ isn’t so bad, is it?”

Hongjoong knows what he means, and he aches to give in. “We shouldn’t.”

“But do you _want_ to?” Seonghwa asks, “Be honest with me, Joong.”

“I-” Hongjoong’s voice cracks. He’s equal parts wanting and scared. Looking back at Seonghwa’s pretty eyes, the scales tip. “Yes.”

“Happy New Year, Kim Hongjoong,” Seonghwa breathes out softly. Hongjoong feels it wash over his lips, the both of them frozen in place, neither feeling quite brave enough. Hongjoong wants to be brave.

“And to you, Park Seonghwa.” 

Though his good sense screams at him to stop, Hongjoong pushes down his calculated caution. In the silence of a world wasting away, Hongjoong lets his universe centre around one selfish moment, around softly parted lips and starry eyes. It’s not quite _la petite mort,_ but it’s something damn near close. 

————————

**[8:17]**

Hongjoong reaches out one hand, and Seonghwa passes him the soju. After one swallow, he winces and decides against it. “I remember growing up and being so excited about being old enough for this stuff,” he reminisces, handing it back over. “Wished our years away, didn’t we?”

“We were just kids,” Seonghwa replies. “We didn’t know what sort of future we were really wishing for.” He sips at the soju again, and grimaces. “This stuff really is disgusting.”

“What kind of future did you want?” Hongjoong asks. It feels strange that they haven’t talked about this before, when they’ve discussed pretty much everything under the sun these past eight years or so. “Before you knew the world would end, I mean.”

“Honestly?...” Seonghwa trails off, “I was never really sure. You know I like to sing, so maybe that.”

Hongjoong doesn’t get to hear him often, the two of them usually worried about what singing might attract. They’ve attracted plenty regardless, so it can’t hurt. “Sing me something pretty, baby?”

Seonghwa looks at him with the kind of intense emotion that people often go their lives wanting. Hongjoong feels so lucky, even now, even here. “Anything,” Seonghwa replies. 

After a moment, Hongjoong picks his favourite song. It’s prettier to focus on than the snarls in the streets below.

————————

**[1:0]**

They wake in a bed that had once belonged to someone else, but Hongjoong doesn’t think about that. Seonghwa is bare-chested and pretty, dark bruises trailing across his torso. He’d grown overenthusiastic in his possessiveness, like there’s anyone around for miles who would try to take away what’s newly his. Still, Hongjoong decides he likes seeing him like this. Seonghwa likes himself like this too, if the begging had been any indicator when Hongjoong’s lips mapped his skin.

Newly his.

_Is Seonghwa his?_

Seonghwa shifts, bleary eyed. “What’re you thinking about so hard, Joongie?”

And maybe Hongjoong likes it when he calls him that. “Nothing.”

“Liar.” Seonghwa sits up, grabbing at him and crowding closer. It should be awkwarder than it is, just a slight heating up of Hongjoong’s cheeks. It feels natural to be like this. “Tell me, baby.”

_Baby._ So it’s like that. “What does this mean?”

“You’re asking awfully cliche questions for one of the few people left on this planet.”

“I’ll push you out of this bed, Park Seonghwa, don’t think I won’t.”

Seonghwa smiles. “You’re hot when you threaten me.”

“ _Answer me,”_ Hongjoong’s voice comes out petulant. He’s embarrassed enough that he tries to look away, but Seonghwa turns him back with hands cupping his face. 

“It means forever, or as much of it as we can buy.” Seonghwa kisses him, initiating it this time, and Hongjoong ends up in his lap somewhere along the way, Seonghwa fluidly pliant beneath him. “I’m all yours, Joongie.”

Hongjoong could get used to this.

————————

**[8:17]**

Something crashes downstairs. Hongjoong supposes it’s the door, though he feels an odd sense of calm despite that. “Do you have more than one?” The sword will do, if not.

“We do everything together, you fool,” Seonghwa replies, bittersweet. “I always save two.”

“Kiss me?” Hongjoong’s voice cracks a little. His body is more scared than his mind, so it seems.

Seonghwa scoots closer to comply, and Hongjoong is glad of their proximity. Their legs dangle over the roof, but Hongjoong doesn’t look down. He doesn’t want to see whether or not the horde is swarming inside. Seonghwa tastes like soju and desperation. Hongjoong drinks him in.

————————

_She was armed, after all. Did it right there in front of us, even as we begged her not to. There were a lot drawn in already from when she screamed, but we probably could have escaped them. With the gunshot, all we could do was barricade the door and hope._

_They haven’t gone away. Need I say what that means for him and I?_

_I’m sorry that my writing is growing messier, but I want to get this down without spending undue portions of what may be final moments on doing so. There’s not much else to recount, really, other than a final list of hiding places, in case someone survives past After and wants to link up my diaries. I keep them on a separate piece of paper, but I’ll tuck it in the back of this one._

_I do hope there’s a time that I can be part of history. Is that selfish to say? Perhaps._

_Farewell for now (I leave you with optimism ill-befitting our situation). Signing off._

_— Kim Hongjoong._

And scrawled beneath it in another’s hand, like a last edition to this testament:

_Park Seonghwa._

————————

**[2:164]**

“I think I’m in love with you.” Hongjoong breathes it into the night sky. They’re sitting in an abandoned tree-house they’ve found in the country, and there’s a hole in the roof. It keeps them off the ground, at least. 

“I’d hope so, by now.” Seonghwa doesn’t sound surprised, though Hongjoong isn’t really subtle. “Oh, and I love you too. Obviously.”

“Shut _up,_ Park Seonghwa.”

“Make me,” Seonghwa replies, and when Hongjoong turns to look at him he’s even sticking his tongue out. 

“I’m not sure this treehouse could withstand me shutting you up, darling,” Hongjoong replies amusedly, “Tempting though you are.”

They end up cuddled together instead, underneath the hole in the roof because the sky is _so_ pretty tonight. Seonghwa looks pretty in the moonlight. If they’re woken by rainfall, then that’s a problem for future them. Seonghwa’s breathing falters, and Hongjoong can tell there’s something he wants to say. He’s tense where Hongjoong’s arm lays around him. 

“What is it?”

“I’m an open book to you, huh?” Seonghwa laughs lightly.

“I’d hope so, by now,” Hongjoong mirrors his earlier words.

“Touché. I’m just thinking.”

“What about?”

“The future.”

Future is a strong word in times like theirs, but Hongjoong bites his tongue on pointing that out. “What about the future, baby?”

“We’ll make it, right?”

Hongjoong knows that Seonghwa isn’t asking for an honest answer. He’s tensed up and anxious, and wants to find solace in a white lie. And so Hongjoong indulges him, with lips pressed to Seonghwa’s temple so his lover can’t see the truth written upon his face. He’s always said that he can read the truth in Hongjoong’s eyes, and Seonghwa would be far from comforted by what he’d see there.

“Yeah,” Hongjoong promises, futile, _“We’ll make it.”_

**Author's Note:**

> their future is up to your interpretation, but i wanted to emphasise that post-apocalyptic survival rates obviously aren't high and explore the sense of inevitability that would come with that? in a way? not mentioning actual death was deliberate, as they've survived this long, so who's to say they won't find a way out. from hongjoong's pov, it feels unlikely, but he also didn't expect to make it to [8:17], so who! knows! open endings are fun like that
> 
> please let me know what you think abt this fic/world/universe etc etc!! <3 comments fuel my soul :') this was my first time writing for ateez, and a style i haven't really tried out before so i had fun with this one!
> 
> feel free to hmu on twt or curiouscat-- i'm mainly a writer for skz, but write for a few other groups too <3 
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/scbaes)
> 
> [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/minbinnie)
> 
> -V <33


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